Study: Zero Child Abuse in Lesbian Households

Posted on Nov 10, 2010

A supporter of two-mom parenting hoists a poster during the annual gay pride parade in Washington, D.C., last June.

Someone call Focus on the Family: A newly published set of findings from a long-running study out of UCLA shows a child abuse rate of zero percent in dual-mommy households. A pool of 78 teenage children with lesbian parents was studied. —KA

The Huffington Post:

The paper found that none of the 78 NLLFS adolescents reports having ever been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26 percent of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent who report sexual abuse.

It’s a rigged much needed legitimacy-inducer counter-“statistic” to the projection onto LGBT’ers all the more unsavory, dark human characteristics that are, in eality, spread uniformly over ALL types of humans, INCLUDING LESBIANS. Thankyou.

Thanks for the condescension. The article was about the instance of child abuse in lesbian homes, not about whether or not it’s a good idea that gays be parents. It’s a fine distinction, but one that should not have been lost on you.

I don’t care if lesbians want to be parents. In fact, let me stipulate for you that I think it’s a wonderful idea.

I do care that someone draws conclusions from a “study” which samples only 78 subjects.

Oh rico, the point is that people are people despite the stereotypes placed upon them. With so many children in need of good homes and people that will love and nurture them it is damn silly to deny a couple the chance to become a family.

Agree. If you only have 78 in your sample, you had better be able to defend you sampling protocol pretty vigorously as well.
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That should be the rule for ALL scientific investigation.

If you ever look at drug testing protocols, Phase I and Phase II studies are about that size—Phase II is about 50 to 100 subjects. Phase I is much smaller numbers.

There are two keys:

1) Is your sampling sizing and stratification and selection process correct?
2) Is you sizing sufficient to produce potentially statistically significant results? (ie, it can be determined in advance if your sample can meet the 95% or 99% Confidence Interval threshold)

It’s not very different than selecting voters to poll. The votes at the booth are the proof of the methodology, but the concepts are the same.

I’m not a statistician but I’ve had some course work and have worked closely with statisticians for decades.

Just 78 families? I find this slightly amusing. So I suppose this means Lesbians are better parents/people then gay men? A few years ago in NYC there was an article in the Daily News about a Lesbian couple who had abused their son. I’m sure they’re not the only ones. I honestly feel this “holier than thou” attitude among gays isn’t going to help their plight.

I agree that its not necessarily invalid just because of the small sample size. It proves nothing but is interesting and worthy of further inquiry. I wonder if the stats would hold true for children raised by homosexual men as well.

One could theorize that Lesbian women who have children really want to have children, and parents who strongly desire children are far less likely to be abusive.

On the other hand it could be that the adolescents questioned in the study have had a lifetime of having to defend their parents and would minimize abusive behavior. In short the kids could be defensive of their families, which could inject reporting bias.

What you both need is to see how the sample was selected. That’s the key to sampling science.

There usually is a protocol and that has what’s called a selection criterion. There are inclusion and exclusion criteria spelled out. If done properly the protocol is peer-reviewed before actual selection begins.

A properly done sample can indicate a great deal from a moderately small sample. 15 is usually the least.